Daily Recaps — July 31

I think I’m going crazy from writing about the news all the time, but it could make for some great content.

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KING BOB’S SCALP ON DISPLAY

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The most prominent victim of the “honorable” Bob Mueller’s witch hunt saw his trial kick off today, with many eager to see just how far the prosecution is willing to go to criminalize association with an outsider president.

Defense attorneys for former campaign chairman Paul Manafort lay most of the blame for fraud at the feet of Manafort’s longtime business associate Rick Gates.

“Gates had his hand in the cookie jar,” Defense attorney Thomas Zehnle said during his opening statement in which he accused Gates of embezzling from Manafort.

The gist of their argument is that Manafort put Gates in charges of his business and personal finances while he was half way around the world working on lucrative consulting contracts and Gates took advantage, “lining his own pockets.”

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To refresh everyone’s memory, the official charges against Manafort deal with bank and tax fraud charges, which, golly gee, just happened to stem from King Bob’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Looks like King Bob hit the nail on the head there. Nothing like a 12-year old foreign lobbying violation to demonstrate collusion with the Ruskies.

Zehnle said the government’s own witnesses, including Manafort’s former bookkeeper Amanda Metzler, will testify that it was Gates who was in charge. He argued that Manafort never intentionally lied to the IRS, and that he only set up accounts through shell companies because that’s what his clients wanted to keep their support for political parties and candidates confidential.

All told, Manafort is facing 18 counts of bank and tax fraud, including allegations that he laundered $30 million from work on behalf of pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians and that he hid money overseas in unreported foreign accounts to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Basically, he didn’t give Uncle Sam their cut of his foreign lobbying money and now they’re coming to collect.

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The prosecution, on the other hand, said the government will be able to prove that Manafort collected more than $60 million from his work for Ukrainian officials, and that he didn’t report all of the income so that he could maintain a life of luxury.

“There’s nothing wrong with being successful or rich, but when you sign a federal tax return you swear you have reported all your income,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Uzo Asonye said during his opening statement.

Asonye listed what he referred to as examples of Manafort’s extravagant lifestyle: seven homes, including residences in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Hamptons, Arlington, Va., and Florida; rugs that cost $5 million; a $21,000 watch; and a custom-made, $15,000 jacket made from an ostrich.

There’s no word on whether Asonye will be covering the lavish jet-set lifestyle of Tony Podesta or anyone else in the Clinton orbit who have been doing literally the exact same thing, even alongside Manafort at times. But see, Tony Podesta never worked for the Trump campaign and thus wouldn’t be able to “flip” on PDT in any way, which is what this is really about. Good for Manafort for fighting back.

According to the gubmint, Manafort didn’t pay taxes for several years on millions of dollars stashed in bank accounts in Ukraine, Cyprus and the Caribbean. They say the evidence will show Manafort opened 30 bank accounts in three counties that served no purpose than to receive and hide his income.

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After its disingenuous opening arguments that failed to mention that half of DC could be charged with Manafort’s crimes, the government called its first witness, Dim operative Tad Devine, who served as #CrazyBernie’s chief strategist in his 2016 presidential run. Certainly no conflict of interest there.

Devine testified that Manafort was “clearly the boss of Gates,” but failed to mention that Hillary “clearly became the boss” of Crazy Bernie for the low low cost of a beach house and a sports car.

All in all, the trial is expected to last about three weeks. It will reconvene at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow morning when prosecutors will call Daniel Rabine, another political consultant, and an unnamed FBI agent to testify. I wonder if said unnamed FBI agent was among the agents who broke into Manafort’s home at the crack of dawn with guns blazing, scaring his wife and children before plundering through his home like the Soviet secret police.

I wonder if the prosecution will mention the fact that in their hunt to find “Russian collusion” they behaved more like Russians than any government agency in our history. Maybe we’ll get lucky and hear something about it from the defense.

After this trial, Manafort faces a separate trial in September in Washington, D.C., also on charges brought by King Bob that include conspiring to defraud the government and launder money, making false statement to federal officials, and failing to disclose he was acting as a political consultant and lobbyist for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, the political party Yanukovych led and the party that took over after he fled to Russia in 2014.

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BIG PICTURE:

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I’ve given this aerial view several times over the last year but it bears repeating. I have no love for foreign lobbyists, be it if they worked for Trump or Pocahontas Warren or anyone else. American citizens have no business using our government to work for the interests of foreigners. If they would like to work for those governments, they should change their citizenship.

That being said, FARA (Foreign Agent Registration Act) violations are a dime a dozen in D.C. Literally thousands of people could be charged with skirting tax law to keep the government’s hands out of their money. The truly sad thing is Manafort isn’t on trial for foreign lobbying, but because Uncle Sam didn’t get his cut. That tells you pretty much all you need to know about the swamp.

But the truth is they don’t even give a damn about that. Manafort was atop the Trump campaign totem pole and thus a prime target to be pressured into “flipping” on PDT. Mueller’s team hasn’t been able to find anything close to what they were supposed to be investigating and Manafort was their last great hope. Thankfully, Manafort is fighting back and Mueller has had no choice but to go to trial, where there is a lot of potential for dirt being exposed. Manafort knows where a lot of bodies are buried in the swamp. This could seriously backfire on King Bob.

That good news aside, it’s an absolute travesty that an American citizen is being prosecuted due to his political connections. This is a campaign to bring down the duly elected President of the United States, and Paul Manafort is but another casualty toward that end. Whatever distaste I may have for his profession, it pales in comparison to the absolute disdain I hold toward the fascistic campaign being waged by the Mueller with hunt team.

It’s an absolute disgrace and shouldn’t be happening in America. It needs to end.

ZUCKERBERG FEEDS THE NARRATIVE

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Facebook was all too happy to march up to the Hill today to reinforce the swamp’s preferred narrative for bringing down their nightmare outsider president: OMG RUSSIA!

Zuckerberg, Inc. revealed a new “coordinated disinformation campaign” ahead of November’s elections that used dozens of fake accounts and pages on its platform. Amazingly, they weren’t referring to Fake News CNN, the failing New York Times or PMSNBC, whose propaganda budgets dwarf that of the Russian intelligence apparatus. Nope, they’re referring to the same old $50,000 nonsense that couldn’t swing an election for dog catcher. But remember, they think it may help Trump, therefore IT’S THE BIGGEST SCANDAL SINCE *insert hyperbolic Watergate reference here.*

The company said it has removed 32 pages and accounts across Facebook and Instagram involved in “inauthentic behavior” after discovering them last week. HOLY CRAP PEOPLE….LISTEN, WE NEED THE BEST ANALYSTS FROM NSA, CIA AND FBI COUNTERINTEL TO JOIN FORCES ASAP TO COMBAT THIS MONUMENTAL THREAT. WE’RE TALKING ABOUT *32* SOCK ACCOUNTS HERE, PEOPLE.

Are these people serious? I’ve seen bigger covert social media operations from ex girlfriends who wanted to sabotage my current relationship. What an absolute joke.

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The fighting Zuckerbergs want Congress to know not to jump too fast, though, because they’re still gathering all the facts. Ya don’t say.

“We’re still in the very early stages of our investigation and don’t have all the facts — including who may be behind this,” Facebook said in a post.

What do you mean you don’t know who’s behind this? I thought this was a full-blown OMG RUSSIA orgy? Geez, next thing you know they’ll be talking about how professional, state-sanctioned hackers rarely leave clear electronic fingerprints as smoking guns. Things are getting craaaaaazy, maaaaaan.

They added, “But we are sharing what we know today given the connection between these bad actors and protests that are planned in Washington next week. We will update this post with more details when we have them, or if the facts we have change,” it added.

What they’re saying there could very well be true. Russians have indeed worked to organize protests within the U.S. But wanna hear something else they won’t mention? Many of the protests that have been astroturfed were FOR Democrats. Know why? Because they play both sides. The strategy is to divide and conquer. Russian intelligence has been doing this since the Civil Rights movement. They are experts at sowing discord. It’s what they do. And now, thanks to the Trump Derangement Syndome addled idiocy of the coochie cap movement, they’ve finally succeeded! Good job, Dims.

But again, we can’t say that this is Russia because THEY DON’T KNOW. And they’re hardly the only country on Earth clever enough to meddle in this way. Russia can’t hold a candle to the threat China poses, but again, that’s not the narrative. We’ve got to run around with hair on fire because of 32 sock accounts posting Crazy Bernie memes.

God help save us from this plague of mindless hysteria.

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Facebook said in its post today that “whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) has in the past.”

I hate to break it to you, folks, but if the IRA didn’t “go to great lengths to cover its true identity,” THERE’S A GOOD CHANCE IT WASN’T THE IRA. These are professional information warriors (allegedly), not some pimple-faced high school kid trying to illegally download the new Lil Wayne album.

But Facebook did say that while it lacked the “technical evidence” (read: evidence) to attribute blame directly, it found that misinformation strategies carried the hallmarks of the IRA’s previous efforts.

“Some of the activity is consistent with what we saw from the IRA before and after the 2016 elections. And we’ve found evidence of some connections between these accounts and IRA accounts we disabled last year,” Facebook said explaining one case in which one of the fake pages briefly had an admin who was also an admin in IRA page from 2016.

Yes, you’re reading that right. Their evidence consists of “it seems like something the Russians would do.” Never mind how mind-numbingly easy it would be for a different foreign intelligence service to launch a Russia-style attack in order to cause chaos within our system. We are making it entirely too easy for the rest of the world. I’d bet a pretty penny that China is laughing itself pink at the sight of our Russian witch hunt as their brigade of hackers (yes, they have an entire brigade that doesn’t nothing but hack us) goes to work on us around the clock.

It’s honestly embarrassing.

Of course, none of this stopped sleazebag Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) from sounding the alarm to let everyone know that OMG THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING:

“Today’s disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation, and I am glad that Facebook is taking some steps to pinpoint and address this activity,” he said.

No, Mark, it’s not. It’s literally and demonstrably not.

The swamp is completely devoid of shame.

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EVERYTHING BUT THE WALL

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More details are emerging on just how they plan to screw us out of #TheWall.

Turtle McConnell said today that he has reached a deal with Dims to move a major spending package next month that would fund the Pentagon, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Labor. Notably absent from that mix is DHS, who is responsible for securing the border.

The Labor-HHS spending bill, as dubbed by the Swamp, is the biggest domestic spending appropriations bill passed by Congress, and it usually sits around until the end of the year as the uni-party pretends to fight over the cost of social programs before ultimately giving the Marxists everything they want.

Turtle is feeling extra ambitious, though, and wants to move it to the floor in August, along with a bill funding the Defense Department.

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“We have an agreement with the Democrats to take up in a few weeks a combination of Labor[-HHS] and Defense,” McConnell said today.

If that rhetoric sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Just a few months ago, the swamp passed a massive $1.3 trillion spending bill that essentially traded defense spending for all the bloated domestic nonsense Cryin’ Chuck is demanding for his demented far-left, abortion-loving base. The Establishment gets everything they want, the #Resist movement gets everything it wants. The only people left out of the goodie bag are the people who voted for the current president. You know, The People. They used to matter at one point in our history.

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“Our hope is by the end of August the Senate will approve nine of 12 appropriations bills, which means 90 percent of the funding of the federal government — from the Senate point of view — will be done through the regular order before we get to Labor Day,” he added.

In other words, they’re trying to fund as many things as possible via individual legislation so as to avoid having to negotiate one massive catch-all budget. I think that’s a perfectly fine idea IF ONE OF THOSE BILLS SUPPORTED THE PRESIDENT’S AGENDA.

Turtle said he hopes the Senate and House will be able to work out their differences on those nine spending bills so they can be delivered to PDT for signature before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

“We hope to be able to conference those bills with the House and send the president a series of conference reports covering those nine of 12 appropriations bills early after we get back from the Labor Day weekend break,” he said.

I hope you get face herpes and never make it back from that damn weekend and Tom Cotton becomes the new Majority Leader. How’s that for hopes?

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BIG PICTURE:

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We’re going to have another huge spending spree without a wall. That’s the bottom line. And the Republicans who are terrified of “rocking the boat” before the midterms either don’t understand the Republican base or don’t care to.

Immigration got PDT elected and the GOP could offset the enthusiasm gap between ourselves and the #Resist Dims by finally growing a spine and protecting the border. But that would endanger K street donations from the big business lobby who have become drunk on cheap labor. And Dims will fight at all costs to preserve their spigot of future socialists.

Mr. President, you’re a brilliant marketer. But I’m going to be as blunt as possible right now. You really need to get started on selling to Trumpers the idea that a wall will actually get built if we show up for the GOP in November. As a hardcore Trumper who speaks with other Trumpers every day, I can tell you that many are losing hope that anything will ever get done. We appreciate all you’ve done but we don’t feel it’s too much to ask to have a miniscule percentage of the overall budget go to your chief campaign promise.

We’re tired of being spat upon. If you can’t play hardball to get anything done legislatively right now, you’re going to have to work very hard to convince many in your base that it will be done eventually.

We need to believe, Sir. You’ve got to start making that happen now.

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KELLY SETS THE FAKE NEWS STRAIGHT

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It’s not the first time this has happened and surely won’t be the last.

Despite reports that he’s been throwing tantrums and announcing his imminent departure, White House chief of staff John Kelly has agreed to remain in his post through the 2020 presidential election.

Sorry Dims, the anti-Priebus isn’t going anywhere for a while.

PDT was happy to rub the news in the Fake News’ faces on Twitter, posting a picture of himself with Kelly sporting a #BigFat Smile as they celebrated his first year anniversary of being the most badass chief of staff in the history of the presidency.

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“One year today, right? He became my chief of staff, Gen. Kelly,” PDT said during a ceremony in the Oval Office.

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For the record, we’re incredibly lucky to have General Kelly in that post. The chief of staff position is a very stressful, difficult and exhausting post, and it is not unusual for those serving in the position to split town after a short tenure. And let’s be real here, it’s that much more challenging under the bull-in-a-China-shop approach of PDT. Not to mention his legendary work ethic. General Kelly wasn’t this tired even in the Marine Corps, #ThatICanTellYou. I can barely keep up writing about the guy; I can’t imagine handling every detail of his day.

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Thank you for your continued service to our nation, Gen. Kelly. Your commitment to protecting a POTUS under constant attack may go down as the crown jewel of a lifetime of service and sacrifice matched by very few.

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You’re a great American.

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